Asia

What’s in a name? Myanmar

Bye-bye, Burma, bye-bye

TO THE regret of some of its stick-in-the-mud writers, The Economist has long followed a strict policy of using official names for places. No East Timor for Timor-Leste, no Ivory Coast for Côte d'Ivoire, and of course, no Peking (heaven forfend!) for Beijing. So not long after the junta ruling Burma in 1989 changed its name to Myanmar, we followed suit.

The junta’s argument—that “Burma” had an ethnic-supremacist tinge, since it referred to the “Burman” majority—was bogus. “Burma” and “Myanmar” have the same etymological roots. But Myanmar became the “official” name—eg, the one by which the country is known at the UN—and we have used it ever since.

There was a wobble in 2008, when we had planned to put the government’s shameful handling of a humanitarian disaster, Cyclone Nargis, on the cover around the world. It was thought that, if we did so in America, “Myanmar’s misery”, our cover in Asia, would have to become “Burma’s misery”, losing alliteration but perhaps gaining the attention of those who had no clue where Myanmar was. In the event, we ran a cover on American politics instead.

Elsewhere, however, the issue of what to call the country has been political. The junta’s friends in Asia called it Myanmar. Supporters of the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, stuck with Burma. So did the governments overseas that backed them, such as those in Europe, and America’s.

So it can hardly have been accidental when Barack Obama, receiving Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, in the White House on May 20th, referred to his country as “Myanmar”. Since he did so several times, one can assume that it was not a slip of the tongue. Indeed, a spokesman confirmed he had done so as a “diplomatic courtesy”. America’s official name for Myanmar is still Burma.

Not for long, however, it seems fair to bet. The West has long recognised that the issue of nomenclature matters to the generals who used to run Myanmar in uniform and who run it still, now wearing civilian clothes. Switching to "Myanmar" is a low-cost concession that would win them goodwill, but is still withheld, presumably in part because of doubts about the resilience of reform in Burma (whoops, Myanmar).

Miss Suu Kyi’s objections have softened too. She often seems to prefer to use “my country”, “this country of ours” or “our country” than to offend Mr Thein Sein and his colleagues by talking of Burma. During the campaign for by-elections last year, she told a press conference that “Burma” had the advantage that it was easier for foreigners to pronounce.

As if to prove her point, she was visited just after her triumph at those polls by David Cameron, the British prime minister. He has difficulty with her name and with that of Thein Sein (whom he seemed to refer to as Than Shwe, the dictator whom Mr Thein Sein succeeded). He can say “Burma” with facility, however, and did so repeatedly. He is probably already practising saying “Myanmar”.

This prickliness about names is hard to understand. For any country or city, being known in several languages is a sign of international recognition, and actually very positive! Why should an English-speaker be forced to say "Deutschland" instead of "Germany", or pronounce "Genève" instead of Geneva? Neither does China insist on being called "Zhongguo"; and with growing confidence the Chinese will also be quite happy to let foreigners call their capital however they want in their own language - as long as it is done with respect. The same thing can be expected in other up-and-coming countries.
So I hope The Economist will soon again be able to use the established English names for internationally known cities in self-confident countries. Bye-bye Burma, but welcome Peking, Bombay and Calcutta!

Come to think of it, there isn't even a nice (non-derogatory) word in Burmese for black people (or African-Americans). "Kappli" is rather derogatory, no?
Besides what's the adjective for Myanmar (I would spell it phonetically correctly as Mranma, by the way). Don't say it's Myanma. (with a short stop). I am talking about English grammar and not Burmese grammar! Oh, I should mention that I still speak a bit of Burmese (with the r's pronounced correctly as is done for old texts and Buddhist scriptures).
This "Myanmar thingy" is just some "remedial politically-correct correction(sic)" for some residual inferiority complex from colonial times (perhaps to please the new masters, the Chinese?) and actually is not even historically well-documented. I recently saw a letter written in Burmese by the Burmese King (Mindon) to the American President J. Buchanan in 1857 and Mindon didn't call the country "Myanmar". That word doesn't even show up in the letter. He called it Thunaparanta, Thanpadipa, or something like that, so go figure!

Peking will soon change the name to Miandian, but the Burmese (Mianmese?) should stop calling the Indians "Kalars" and Chinese "Tayoke" (how do the Zhongguoans call the Indians?)
Deutschland is Allemagne and Greece is Hellas, Finland is Suomi, Mt. Everest is Qomolangma
Whatever!

The government of Cote d'Ivoire officially demands that it be called Cote d'Ivoire, even in English. It looks like the ISO pushes for Timor-Leste.

So using "Ivory Coast" and "East Timor" are politically incorrect in the actual meaning of the word: political powers have declared these to be incorrect usages. Again, this doesn't mean that they are bad/insensitive/racist/colonialist/what have you, just that they are not politically-accepted terms right now. Those political requirements might be bonkers, but that's another story.

Much as I still may be tempted to call Mumbai Bombay and despite my general disregard for governments wasting time and money renaming towns/cities/roads for political reasons I do think if a democratically elected government does choose to change the name of a town/city/road then we need to respect that too.

As I note in response to kommonsenses below, America is also the common name used by most people in Japan, and elsewhere, when referring to the US - so it's not just the Economist. Also, The United States of Mexico is generally shorted to just "Mexico" in common parlance, but I never see anyone moaning about that.
Likewise, it's completely logical to shorten "The United States of America" to just "America". Maybe if Brazil or Argentina want to actually use the word "America" in their name, there'd be some reason for dispute.

But Peking is really quite wrong. It's the old spelling in Wade Giles, which was linguistic transcription of Chinese and that was changed into a Postal transcription which is where the k comes from. If you knew the correct way to read it, it still sounds like Beijing.

It's like saying that someone should still write "New York" as "nu jɔrk" since that's how New York is written in IPA.

It's literally politically incorrect because the current politics (ie the government of the country) dictates a different name to be used for official purposes.. It's not politically incorrect in the "insensitive language" sense.

@kommunisenses
Where in my comment did I say anything about Suu Kyi? That was the other commentator Alex DeLarge and stop using ad hominem attacks against me. It's against the TE comments policy and besides, it's not a good testament to a 3000 year old culture LOL

Yes,I also recommend .The original name of the country is BURMA which is not the heritage of British colonialism as military group said.Changing the name of original BURMA into MYANMAR without any declaration to entire nationals is shameful and it does not meet democracy norms.

PS - The easy way to remember that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is 'North' and the Republic of Korea is 'South' is that countries with 'Democratic' in their name are generally dictatorships.

I should acknowledge the late Dr Henry Drucker as my source for this advice, given during a Politics 1 lecture at the University of Edinburgh in the mid-1980s. At that time, 'East Germany' was the German Democratic Republic.